A survey with +/- 0% margin of error has found that the best ice-cream is rocky-road. Yeah, probably Haagen-Dazs.

That’s all fine and good, but its useless unless you know that the survey consisted of asking myself what ice-cream I would like at the moment.

Although… maybe strawberry… hmmmm

Well back to my point.

The Alliance Defense Fund has released a new Surprising and Shocking Survey that pretends to report that Americans really-o truly-o don’t want Teh Gheys to marry:

Contrary to recently released studies that suggest increasing support for homosexual “marriage,” an extensive national survey reveals just the opposite.

Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) commissioned the study through Public Opinion Strategies. It reveals that 62 percent of Americans believe “marriage should be defined only as a union between one man and one woman.” Fifty-three percent of Americans participating in the study “strongly” agreed.

Well, gosh, that should shake things up. Right?

Except, of course, that the reputation of Alliance Defense Fund is so abysmal that everyone assumes that they are just lying. That’s what liars do, after all.

So no media has even blinked. None.

Well, the Christian Post, Charisma News, and the ever-wacky Dakota Voice all trotted it out as though it were legit (when will Christian media tire of being patsies of political operatives pretending to be religious?). And several alternative media sources have reported the story about ADF’s bogus polling and how it is nothing more than propaganda. And the Sacramento Bee ran the press release in their “unedited press release” section.

But no mainstream press, not even very conservative mainstream press, ran with this story. It simply isn’t credible. As the Colorado Independent noted:

The group says 53 percent of Americans strongly agreed with the statement and only 35 percent disagreed.

But CitizenLink provides little other data on methodology. There is no list of questions asked, no tabs breaking down how various constituencies were chosen or how they answered and in what percentages.

The poll was reportedly commissioned last month by the conservative Alliance Defense Fund. The firm that conducted the survey, Polling firm Public Opinion Strategies, is tied to Republican Party causes and has been linked to unethical election campaign strategies in the past. According to Raw Story, the firm was charged with violating Virginia polling disclosure laws and was accused of using push polls to influence elections in favor of Republican candidates.

You know, it must be embarrassing to realize that everyone knows that you are lying. Everyone.

When you’re dealing with mainstream publications, Tim, you’re absolutely right. However, when you take that detour off into lunatic-fringeland, these things do get noticed. This was on the website of our local hate group (as certified by the SPLC), the Illinois Family Institute as of today: http://illinoisfamily.org/news/contentview.asp?c=35314. Groups like IFI and others tend to exist in an alternative reality, where hard facts and metholodigies are a very minor consideration. It’s the conclusion that counts, no matter how convoluted the logic used to arrive at it.

Now that IFI has published this on its website, LaBarbera will likely pick up on this, because he’s a buddy of theirs. Also, the new group, the Illinois Defense of Marriage Initiative will also pick up and parrot this “survey,” as they try to place an advisory marriage referendum on a statewide ballot.

Sooner or later, a reporter working at one of the mainstream publications will neglect to do his/her homework, and publish the results of this survey without checking the facts as you have done. It may not happen for weeks or even months, but it will happen and suddenly, the ADF survey will gain some measure of credibility by being cited by the Chicago Tribune or the Sun-Times or some other publication.

Everytime I look at that absurd literature review out of California which is now cited everywhere to show that we are only 3.5% of the population (or was it 2% or was it 4% or was it???) I am reminded of just how few people actually understand anything about statistical analysis.

When I read about such bald-faced lies, I am reminded of the following:
Prov 14:5
5 A faithful witness will not lie, But a false witness speaks lies.

Guess that doesn’t apply when you are fighting for “Christian” values.

But we don’t base civil rights on the number of people who will utilize them.

We don’t look at the buses to see whether black folk are riding in the front or the back. We don’t quiz Jews on just how many are wearing yarmelkes. We don’t ask how many women really want to be corporate executives. Rather we remove barriers to freedom and allow people to live how they see fit.

Or, rather, that’s what lovers of freedom and equality do. Folks who hate freedom and equality look for excuses to deny it to people.

I remember how Lou Sheldon and his daughter would grumble at what they thought were tax payer funded research and studies on gay people.
Then they challenged the veracity of privately funded research of the same.

Then they asserted that THEIR studies were the most accurate and truthful ones. Which actually weren’t contemporary, comparative studies or research of a broad or lengthy sampling, but in fact selective cut and paste jobs on research that had been done decades ago on a sampling that consisted of gay men who’d been institutionalized.
Because they, in no way, would want to fund any comprehensive studies at all.

The TVC AND FoTF however, took these suspect findings and reported them very differently and out of context to the subject.
Similar to how this poll is reported by ADF, there is no breakdown of subjects they asked by gender or age or ethnicity. Nor a list of the questions they asked.

I think considering that the ADF AND TVC have been resentful of whatever expense has been utilized for research into how discrimination impacts gay lives, or how gay people live DESPITE discrimination.
The ADF likes to think of themselves as impacted and victimized negatively by gay people.
It would be pretty difficult to manufacture evidence of that, where there is none. Hence, lying would have to substitute.
But they wouldn’t want to spend the money, and invest the time in the sorts of effective research or polling that would come closer to more accurate results.

In this original BTB Investigation, we unveil the tragic story of Kirk Murphy, a four-year-old boy who was treated for “cross-gender disturbance” in 1970 by a young grad student by the name of George Rekers. This story is a stark reminder that there are severe and damaging consequences when therapists try to ensure that boys will be boys.

When we first reported on three American anti-gay activists traveling to Kampala for a three-day conference, we had no idea that it would be the first report of a long string of events leading to a proposal to institute the death penalty for LGBT people. But that is exactly what happened. In this report, we review our collection of more than 500 posts to tell the story of one nation’s embrace of hatred toward gay people. This report will be updated continuously as events continue to unfold. Check here for the latest updates.

In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.

From the Inside: Focus on the Family’s “Love Won Out”

On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.

Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!

Anti-gay activists often charge that gay men and women pose a threat to children. In this report, we explore the supposed connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the conclusions reached by the most knowledgeable professionals in the field, and how anti-gay activists continue to ignore their findings. This has tremendous consequences, not just for gay men and women, but more importantly for the safety of all our children.

Anti-gay activists often cite the “Dutch Study” to claim that gay unions last only about 1½ years and that the these men have an average of eight additional partners per year outside of their steady relationship. In this report, we will take you step by step into the study to see whether the claims are true.

Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council submitted an Amicus Brief to the Maryland Court of Appeals as that court prepared to consider the issue of gay marriage. We examine just one small section of that brief to reveal the junk science and fraudulent claims of the Family “Research” Council.

The FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.